


A Dream by Day

by Damkianna



Category: Circle of Iron | The Silent Flute (1978)
Genre: Denial, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Post-Canon, Presumed Dead, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 11:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18637168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Cord lay in the dungeon with his cheek pressed to the dank and grimy stone, and did not lift his head.It seemed far too much effort. What would he gain by it? He'd looked his fill. Only the dimmest light filtered down to him here, a guttering torch or two somewhere along the passage—further than he could see even with his face pressed to the bars, though he hadn't bothered to move that far in a few days.





	A Dream by Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galerian_ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galerian_ash/gifts).



> This was so delightfully self-indulgent to write that I feel like I should be thanking you for giving me the opportunity, galerian_ash! I just hope you enjoy it, and that you've had a lovely Hurt/ComfortEx! ♥

 

 

_In visions of the dark night_   
_I have dreamed of joy departed—_   
_but a waking dream of life and light_   
_hath left me brokenhearted._

_Ah! What is not a dream by day_   
_to him whose eyes are cast_   
_on things around him with a ray_   
_turned back upon the past?_

—from "[A Dream](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44886/a-dream-56d22426d2d30)" by Edgar Allen Poe

 

 

Cord lay in the dungeon with his cheek pressed to the dank and grimy stone, and did not lift his head.

It seemed far too much effort. What would he gain by it? He'd looked his fill. Only the dimmest light filtered down to him here, a guttering torch or two somewhere along the passage—further than he could see even with his face pressed to the bars, though he hadn't bothered to move that far in a few days.

Or at least he thought it had been a few days. It was hard to be sure, and it wasn't as though it mattered. This was what his world was made of, now: darkness and filth, the scrape of pitted stone and the skitter of rats' feet, the cold heavy shackles at his wrists and ankles.

This was all that was left.

He lay there, aching, staring through the dimness without seeing. He breathed. Time passed. He couldn't pick it apart anymore, it was all of a piece. The clawing of hunger in his gut, thirst in his throat; the slow throb of bruising where they'd beaten him, the sharper sting where the whip had struck. And—

And a wound of another kind, deeper, that bled and bled and would not stop. Whether he starved or they beat him to death, fed him to dogs or cut his head from his shoulders—that wound would be the thing that had killed him, he knew.

Perhaps he should have done something. Tested his chains, searched for a weak link to exploit. These dungeons were old and vast; who knew what secrets might lie in their darkest corners? Perhaps there was a way out, somewhere. Perhaps he could escape, and leave this place behind.

He closed his eyes, and listened to the rats instead.

 

 

In time, there were guards.

Cord wasn't surprised. It was all familiar to him, now. They came and went, dragging prisoners out or shackling new ones down while they pleaded—the drag of their boot-soles against stone, their low voices. Mocking, often. Arrogant. The voices of men who'd been granted some authority and felt themselves the stronger for it. Entitled by it to all the petty cruelty that might otherwise have lain fallow within them, festering.

Cord had been very like them, once. If he'd won that medallion, felt himself justified in his ways—who could say?

The guards drew nearer, nearer. Cord lay and listened, and did not look. What would be the point? Either they were here for him, or they weren't. He would find out which soon enough.

A rattle, a clank. Closer still, and then he felt the toe of a boot against his shoulder, his side.

They spoke to him. He didn't listen. It was all insults, more than likely, judging by the way they laughed, the way one of them spat on him after. _He_ almost laughed, then—as if it made a difference what they did or didn't do to him, what they thought of him.

They caught at his chains, tugged, and the shackles bit into his wrists, his ankles. They dragged him up, and two of them gripped him by the arms, blunt-fingered, bruising.

He wondered distantly what it was they meant to do with him. The mad king Dathar, whose dungeons these were, had varied tastes in entertainment—it was difficult to guess what he might have in mind for Cord this time.

Not that it mattered much.

The dungeon's moldering stone was left behind; the guards hauled him up a broad set of steps, and then along a corridor. But then—through an archway he hadn't seen before, a vast open room colonnaded along its length, and out.

 _Out_. He flinched from the unfamiliar light of the sun, and the heat of it on his face was searing, shocking. He was almost glad to be dragged beneath the shade of more stone, and only then did he realize, dimly, that he could hear shouting. People—a crowd, chanting and cheering, whipped up nearly to a frenzy.

And then a voice, raised over them, commanding. The mad king Dathar himself, no doubt, or perhaps his vizier.

"Festival day," said one of the guards, smug and slurred—drunk, Cord thought. "Just don't make it too quick, eh?" and then a gate was drawn aside, and rough hands shoved him through, still chained, so that he stumbled on his weak legs and dropped to his knees in sand.

He knelt there, blinking, distantly bewildered. They'd never brought him anywhere except to hurt him, one way or another. But they had let go of him; no fists, no blows, no whipping post.

A festival day, he thought belatedly. What did that mean?

And then he dragged his head up, squinting, and understood.

An arena. The crowd, above, a blur of faces—and even as he looked, found the raised dais at the side where King Dathar sat, they let out a roar of sound; bewildering, deafening, now that Cord was at the center of it.

Dathar looked more concerned with the slave woman he held clutched to his side than with anything happening in the arena, at least for the moment. It was the vizier who'd been speaking after all, arms raised, standing forward and out of the shade of the palm leaves held over the king.

He spared not even a glance for Cord—only gestured, imperious, toward the far end of the arena. There was a second gate there, and it opened, moved by some mechanism Cord couldn't see. The shadow beyond it was impenetrable to Cord's eyes, from where he stood in the bright sun. But there was a soft animal sound, a huff, a growl. A shout, and a clack of wood; deliberate, a sound made to startle and harry.

And in a quick flurry of flowing steps, a tiger walked out.

Cord stared at it. And then he tipped his head back, and laughed.

It had already looked displeased—eyes narrow, ears back, tail lashing. It didn't seem fond of the noise, the crowd; no doubt it would rather have been prowling a forest somewhere than chased in here by its keepers, the nobility of its wild hunt reduced to an amusement for drunken men and women on a festival day.

"My sympathies, friend," Cord told it, and laughed again.

 _Don't make it too quick_ , the guard had said. Wanting a fair share of entertainment. A fight, a struggle.

And once Cord would have been all too eager to oblige. But now—

Now, he was already dead, even if he hadn't yet had the sense to lie down. The tiger could do nothing to him but kill him, in the one way remaining—the way that mattered least of all. What a relief it would be! To leave this aching useless body behind, to leave it all behind, to slide away into the long quiet dark at last.

He knelt there in his chains and he laughed, and then he held out his hands to the tiger, shackles clanking, and waited.

The sound of the crowd changed—disapproving, frustrated to be denied their sport. The tiger liked it no better, pacing and snarling but moving no closer to Cord. Perhaps, Cord thought, he should have tried to run after all. It might have chased him then on the strength of instinct alone. But surely he need only wait a little longer, and it would spare him the worse fate: to be dragged back down to the dungeon again—

And then, among the angry shouting faces and raised fists, there was movement of another kind.

Someone was pressing forward around the curve of the arena wall, at the lowest level—the height of two men, at most, from the sand where Cord knelt. The cries of those nearest changed: at first, sharp with irritation; and then rising in surprise, startlement, as whoever it was leaped easily up onto the edge of the wall, and then dropped down the side of it, landing in a comfortable crouch. Then they lifted their head, and looked at Cord.

Except "looked" was the wrong word, for—

For it was the blind man.

It was—it looked like the blind man. So very like. The way he held himself, the casual and unassuming strength; the calm, steady ease with which he ignored the shouting, the insults, the vizier's cries of dismay and the king himself coming to his feet on the dais. His _face_ —

Cord closed his eyes, and turned away. No. It was impossible. Madness had come to him at last, that was all. It didn't matter; he would wait here and the tiger would kill him, or perhaps Dathar's guards if the tiger was too slow, and the end would be welcome.

He clenched his fists, savored the bright, cold sting of the shackles shifting against his raw wrists. That was real, surely. The hot sun, too, was real, and the scrape of the sand beneath his knees. And in a little while, the teeth of the tiger would be real, and then this would all be over, and what he had seen—what he had _thought_ he had seen—would not matter.

Except the next thing he heard, kneeling there with his eyes shut, wasn't the tiger padding toward him across the arena. The next thing that touched him wasn't its breath, its claws, nor even a blunt blow from its paws, testing, toying with him.

It was a hand.

A hand. Strong, warm—familiar.

The hand gripped him by the arm and guided him to his feet, gentle but inexorable.

"Well," someone murmured. "What an interesting place it is you find yourself in."

Cord didn't let himself think about the voice, the sound of it. He kept his eyes shut tight and said nothing, twisting away, almost sharply enough to break the grasp of that hand.

Almost, but not quite.

But wasn't that its own sort of foolishness? Cord felt suddenly trapped, more thoroughly than chains could ever have bound him, by his own indecision. To fight the grip upon him was to concede that it existed—and yet to follow it would do the same. He felt himself begin to shake. All that had been done to him in this place, and this, at last, was the thing he couldn't bear; nothing but an illusion, surely, a dream of his own mind—

The shouts of the crowd had reached a fevered pitch. But among them, beyond them, was a sterner voice speaking quick sharp words. Orders, Cord thought, and made himself look. Out across the arena, safely away from—from whatever was beside him, whatever wraith or spirit he would find there.

King Dathar's guards had begun to rush out. From the gate where Cord had been brought in, so that he and whoever was or was not beside him were between them and the tiger. Wise, for the tiger remained displeased with the noise and commotion, and had begun to draw back its lips, showing warning glints of teeth.

"If you are so eager to die, then do it!" one of them shouted, and reached out with his spear—caught Cord in the ribs with the point of it, sharp enough to cut, and Cord stumbled back from the blow.

Stumbled back, and was steadied, impossibly. And then—

It couldn't be, surely. Cord tried never to remember it, the blind man surrounded by bandits—the way they had fallen before him, like scythed wheat; the whistle of the flute as it swung. He tried not to think of the blind man at all.

And yet now it was the same. The thing that could not be the blind man stepped forward, and let go of Cord, and caught the spear by the haft just past the blade. And all at once the weapon no longer belonged to the guard, and it struck him just so—here, here, here—and he cried out and fell back. His fellows rushed forward in outrage and were dealt with as easily, clean and sure, no effort wasted.

And then whoever was not the blind man turned and reached for Cord again. "The gate wasn't barred properly," he said; and then, very mild, "You'd think they'd have been more careful, with a tiger in here."

Cord bit his mouth so he wouldn't make the mistake of answering, and twisted his face away.

But whoever was not the blind man had been right. The tiger, improbably, let them skirt by with nothing but a warning rumble deep in its chest, and the gate behind it came loose with a rattle. The stone corridor that rounded the arena was dark and cool, after all that burning sun, and beyond the outer arch of it, another colonnaded path, they stepped out into the streets of the city of Mirzan, and were free.

 

 

The city gave way, as cities do, to other things. Mirzan was the largest city Cord had ever seen, and yet it seemed like no time at all before they had left its walls behind and all was given over to grassy plains; and then to wilderness, the forest creeping close along the banks of a broad slow river that had stretched itself out wide and lazy in the sun.

At first, Cord could not look at any of it. It was impossible, unreal. It was—it was _all_ impossible, that after so long chained in the dark he should be limping along in the open air, in warmth and brightness, surrounded by green and growing things, and—

And in such company.

But in time, he realized: he did understand after all. He had been right, in the arena, to call it madness—to call it a dream. He had thought it had begun the moment he had looked up and seen the blind man's face. That was where he had erred. Surely instead it was all of it, the arena, the tiger, everything. Surely he lay yet on the dank rough-hewn stone of the dungeon floor, and the guards had never even come for him. That must be it.

He felt something settled within him, knowing this, and it became easier to breathe, to move. He became aware of the breeze, the peppered warmth and coolness of sun and shade across his skin as the leaves of the trees swayed this way and that overhead; there was even some pleasure in it, now that he understood it was a dream.

And the touch against him, the hand. It was allowed to be the blind man's, in a dream. That was all right.

The only thing left to fear was that sooner or later he must wake.

But not yet. Not yet, he thought dimly. Please—not yet.

They had come to a little grove, a stand of younger trees that parted to allow for the passing of a small chuckling stream. And then the blind man stopped.

Cord stopped, too. And suddenly the blind man was not gripping him one-handed but had—had put a steady arm about his shoulders, and was easing him carefully down by the side of the stream, and saying something to him.

Cord didn't listen. He wanted to tell the blind man how stupid he was, how foolish; as if Cord had not been thrown to a stone floor and beaten a dozen times or more, as if it were being drawn down to kneel upon the cool moss that might hurt him.

But his throat ached, and he could not speak. And besides, what sense did any of this have to make, when it was a dream?

So he bit his tongue and dropped, unsteady, within the sheltering curve of the blind man's arm. He hadn't let himself look too long at the blind man's face, before. But here they were; and of course it was just as he remembered it. The blind man himself was just as Cord remembered him, and—and closer to Cord, now, than anyone had been in a long time except to deliver a blow.

Cord closed his eyes, dizzied. It was a dream, he reminded himself. It was a dream, it didn't matter, it meant nothing—

The blind man fell silent. Cord expected the warm weight of the arm to fall away next, and then the moss beneath him, the cool air around him. Nothingness would replace it all, and then he would wake.

So he startled like an animal at the touch of the blind man's hand. The blind man waited him out, steady, and then reached for him again, fingertips careful against his forehead, his temples; the lids of his eyes, as he let them fall closed. His brow, his cheek, his jaw. His throat, the hollow of it, and the line of his collarbone—

There was a wound there. The blind man's hand moved lightly, and had passed over bruising without pain. But this was deeper, older, unhealed, where the barbed tip of a whip had curled over the yoke of Cord's shoulders and had cut. Cord had forgotten it, but beneath the blind man's touch it woke and stung afresh, and Cord flinched away.

Almost as soon as he felt himself do it, he wished he hadn't. Dreams were fragile things. How much longer could he expect this one to linger? There was no time to waste with _flinching_ like a fool, from a dream-touch that could not even hurt him—

Except, he thought distantly, it had hurt. It had hurt very much.

The blind man had not moved. His sightless eyes were fixed, as always, somewhere in the middle distance; but a strange shadow had settled over that familiar face, where Cord had expected nothing but placid calm.

"Cord," the blind man said softly. "What happened?"

Cord stared at him, wordless, bewildered. There was no answer—there were too many.

The blind man frowned at him, a mild chiding look so ordinary Cord almost laughed; as though this were not a dream but any of a thousand other days, the blind man with wisdom to impart if Cord would only hear it and Cord too impatient to listen.

And then he set his hands upon Cord again. Because of course he couldn't look for Cord's wounds, except like this.

Careful, clever fingers found the whip-wounds that crossed Cord's shoulders, aching raised lines not yet old enough to be called scars; and the chafed sores where he had lain unmoving on wet stone for so long; and the raw weals at his wrists that lay beneath the heavy shackles. The crust of newly-dried blood along the ribs—Cord blinked and stared down at it, vaguely puzzled, and only then remembered the guard in the arena, the spear-blade that had cut him.

"Cord," the blind man said again, very low, brow drawn down, jaw tight—the most troubled Cord had ever seen him. "Cord," and he left one hand where it was, following the curve of Cord's ribs, and with the other he touched Cord's face.

Not searching for anything, not any longer. Just touching.

And that, sudden and unexpected, was the thing Cord could not withstand, the thing that made his eyes sting hot and spill. He fumbled for the blind man's arms, his wrists, spread his shaking hands and pressed them over the backs of the blind man's; and the blind man did not fade or melt away, or any half-dozen other things that might have happened in a dream. It was as though he were truly there, and oh, how Cord wished to _savor_ it—he felt drunk with it, shivering, feverish, to be touched by hands that would not hurt him—

"Please," he murmured, closing his eyes. "Please, not yet," and he didn't even know he had done it aloud until he felt the blind man's thumb go still against his jaw.

"If you'd like to tell me a riddle," the blind man said gently after a moment, "perhaps you'd better start at the beginning."

Cord bit his cheek. It didn't seem right to say it—to be made to explain oneself to one's own dream. And yet there was no reason not to. What harm could it do?

"This isn't real," he said.

The blind man was quiet for a long, thoughtful moment. "Isn't it?" he said at last.

"No," Cord said. "No, of course it isn't. It can't be."

"Oh? And why is that?" the blind man asked, soft.

Cord squeezed his burning eyes shut tighter still and shook his head. Let it tip, until it came to rest against the lee of the blind man's shoulder. He was so tired. It shouldn't be possible to feel so tired, in a dream.

"Because you're dead," he made himself say. "You're dead."

He waited, breathless, for something to happen—for a bolt of lightning, a crack of thunder; for the blind man to turn to ash beneath his hands, or be revealed for a pile of bleached bones after all.

But instead the blind man was silent for a time, and then made a small considering sound. "Is that so? And here I had thought I would be the first to know it."

Cord laughed, except the sound was thin and jagged, cracking like a weak bough. He laughed, and said nothing.

"Cord," the blind man said. "I fell—"

"No," Cord said. "No. I looked for you. I _looked_ for you, and I found—" He couldn't say it; but then he didn't need to, did he? Of all the foolish things he had done in this dream, to _argue_ with it—with his own mind!—was surely the most foolish of all. "No," he said again, instead. "You're dead. You are dead, and I am alone," and even knowing it was not real, he did not want to leave it behind, but it was—he was so tired, and everything was fading, and he could not hold on.

 

 

He _had_ looked.

It had all happened so fast. Bandits, of course. High in the mountains, for Cord and the blind man had been on their way to visit the famed monastery of Pir-a-Piru—to deliver an amulet with which Cord had been entrusted, given to him by a dying man on a riverbank many days before. The blind man had known the way; and they had expected there might be trouble. Pilgrims were easy pickings for men without honor.

The error had been Cord's. No doubt all twelve of them would have fallen to the blind man. Perhaps Cord should have let him fight alone, should have sat back by the cliff's edge and caught his breath, and enjoyed the sunshine.

But that was not what he had done, and when he had stepped on a bandit's dropped blade, faltered in surprise and pain, the blind man had come to his aid. Had left the stance from which no one in all the world could have shifted him, if he hadn't wished it—and that, surely, was the only reason it had been possible for even a blow of great force to knock him from the cliff's edge.

Cord couldn't say what might have happened next. He remembered only stillness, a cold bright airlessness. He had come back to himself with blood on his knuckles, bodies left fallen behind him, scrabbling toward the cliff on hands and knees. No, he had thought. No, _no_ , and he hadn't even turned and looked, hadn't seen the blade that had gone through him before its owner had pulled it free and kicked him from the edge himself.

He had dropped the height of two men, at the most, and struck his head upon the ledge where he had landed. And oh, how he rued it—who knew how much time it had taken him to wake? To claw his way back up to the monastery path, dizzied and aching; to stumble through the brush and undergrowth, painstaking, searching for some other way to reach the cliff's foot.

It had been days, more of them than he had cared to try to count. He had fallen half a dozen times himself, reopened the sword-wound more than once, left blood in a dripping trail over leaves and stones.

Too long. Much too long, for by the time he had found it—

By the time he had found it, the body had had no face anymore.

As best he could judge, it had been a man, and of the right height. Dressed in humble clothing; no longer clean, stained and soiled by dirt and wet and weather, by blood, but familiar in its look.

He had fallen to his knees beside it, and stayed there for a long time. Understanding had come to his head, his heart, in pieces—because it was impossible, _impossible_ , that the blind man should have—that the blind man should be—

 

 

That was what he dreamed of. Not the finding; the seeking, that long silent blur of days, and in the manner of a dream it seemed to go on forever, no body at all. Cord knew it should be there and yet it wasn't, and so he must keep looking for it, no matter how he dreaded the moment he would succeed.

Except, he thought dimly, he'd already been dreaming.

Hadn't he?

But then that was the way of dreams. They came and went, formed and melted away, traded places with one another without warning. The first had ended, and so would this, and at last he would awaken.

Back in the dungeons of the mad king of Mirzan, no doubt. He had rather wander the mountain cliffs by the path to Pir-a-Piru forever. But already he could feel the dream growing thin around him, the soft dark encroaching. He would be drawn into it, through it, and leave dreams behind for stone and chains.

He tried to cling to it, stubborn. But of course that only made it seep through his fingers faster, and all too soon he was waking indeed.

At least, he thought, he might keep his eyes closed for a while and pretend. If he breathed slow and didn't move, it would be as though he were sleeping still; he couldn't feel the shackles at his wrists or ankles, not yet, shreds of the dream mercifully persisting.

He became aware, distantly, of a presence. Another shred of the dream, no doubt, for he felt no apprehension, no pain—it could not be a guard. It calmed him, soothed him. It was warm. It was—

It was the blind man, he thought, and behind their lids his closed eyes prickled, wet, and suddenly he despised himself.

How long could he carry on this foolishness? It was good, he told himself viciously, that he was about to wake at last—that he would have to leave such nonsense behind him.

Except then hands touched him, precise and careful. And the chains _were_ gone after all, somehow; he couldn't claim to understand it, but all that touched his raw wrists now were wrappings of some kind, soft cloth. He was—there was water, more cloth: those hands, washing him clean.

It made no sense. He woke—he _woke_ —but the presence did not leave him, and when at last he had blinked his eyes open, the first thing he saw was the blind man.

"Ah, there you are," the blind man said, mild.

No. It was impossible. "No," Cord said aloud, staring at him.

The blind man tilted his head, reached and dipped the cloth in his hands into that small chuckling stream and then held it over Cord's chest again, and the drips were clear and clean and _icy_ ; Cord yelped and squirmed, his body stiff and aching, and caught the blind man's wrist in one unsteady hand.

"What do you think you're—"

"So you are there after all," the blind man mused. "What a peculiar thing to say."

"What?" Cord said, and then squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. The blind man was as confusing as he had ever been. "No, no. _I_ am here. It's you—you aren't. You can't be."

"Oh, yes, that's right," the blind man said. "I am dead. You mentioned that." His expression turned considering. "Strange, that I should need the reminder. Don't you think so?"

Cord made an exasperated sound. "This isn't the time for your games!" he said. "None of this has been real, it—it makes no sense." Maybe he wasn't in the dungeon; maybe the tiger had eaten him after all.

The tiger. Cord looked up, eyes narrowed.

"You. You stopped that tiger from eating me, didn't you? How?"

The blind man raised his eyebrows. "I am an old blind man. You think I could stop a hungry tiger from eating anyone?"

"Then why didn't it?"

"That one must not have been hungry," the blind man said, very bland.

Cord bit down on a wild laugh. How he had missed this! Even this, this frustration, this bafflement; the sense that for all the blind man had already taught him, there remained so much to learn—and the warmth, too, the slow bloom of gratitude that had begun—where? In the desert, perhaps. Facing Chang-Sha, to the soft notes of a distant flute whose sound Cord would have recognized anywhere. Or earlier, when the blind man had in his inaction acted, allowing Cord to follow him. Or later, the moment Cord had looked into Zetan's book—had perceived in that glimpse the barest outline of the wisdom the blind man had already shared with him, the silhouetted shapes of truths whose edges he had already begun to feel his fumbling way along, and had laughed.

"You are _dead_ ," he spat instead, digging the heels of his hands into his stinging eyes.

"Very well," the blind man said agreeably, and then the cool wet cloth came down against Cord's shoulder, just above the festered whip-wound. "Hold still."

"So you admit it, then," Cord said, and did laugh after all, cracked, half-choked by it.

"I told you once that I am whatever you believe me to be," the blind man said, tone absent, as though all his concentration were taken up by the task of cleaning Cord's shoulder, and he had none to spare for these trivialities of life and death. "You think I am dead. Who here can gainsay you? Unless you decide to believe I am alive, you will act and think and speak as though I am dead. Does that not, in its way, make it truth?"

Cord huffed through his nose, and did not answer.

For a dead man, the blind man had warm hands.

"So," the blind man said. "You have been traveling, since my death."

"I suppose you might call it that," Cord agreed.

He glanced down. The chains were still there after all; the blind man had pried the shackles open somehow while Cord slept.

Cord reached out and ran a fingertip along the curve of one thick link. It was strange to be without them, after so long. He supposed he must have been used to it once, to moving unburdened—but as it was, he felt almost unbalanced, unmoored, without the weight of them to bear.

"I did not know where to go or what to do," he said, absent. "I wandered alone for a time. There were raiders who meant to take me for a slave; but I would not work no matter how they beat me, so they left me in the wilderness. A merchant caravan found me there, and I was fed and cared for, and taken to the city. One of the king's guard misliked the look of me, and took my silence for insolence, and so I was imprisoned."

It sounded like so little, laid out that way, and yet Cord searched within himself and found no more words to say. That was how it had gone; all that had been done to him, he had survived. What else was there to tell?

But the blind man's hands had slowed upon his shoulder, his chest, and he looked and saw that the blind man's brow had drawn down into a gentle frown.

"And then the mad king of Mirzan tried to feed me to a tiger," Cord allowed belatedly.

"Indeed," the blind man said. "And what have you learned?"

"Learned?"

The blind man's frown deepened. "All the time I have known you, Cord, you have always been seeking something. Wisdom, skill, understanding." The corner of his mouth quirked—"Someone to fight," he murmured—and then smoothed, sobering. "Something to defeat, even if it was only yourself."

Cord closed his eyes and shook his head. How to explain it? Where to begin? Even if he had found the words, his tight aching throat would never let him speak them.

Without the blind man—it had been all emptiness. Where could he have sought wisdom, in a world that had no longer contained any he wished to possess? No skill had been worth having, if it could not be learned by the guidance of the blind man's hands; no understanding could have enlightened his mind, if the lesson that had imparted it was not spoken in the blind man's voice. He had wanted none of it, pursued none of it—only drifted, waiting, to see how it would end.

But of course silence said as much to the blind man as speech.

"Oh, Cord," he said, very softly.

And again, all at once, it was too much: the blind man's touch, the warmth of it, almost a shock—like the sunlight had been, after so long shut away in the dark. Cord shivered under it, skin prickling, eyes hot, feeling strange and wild, desperate.

It was as if he had no choice in it, in the end. The blind man had a hand at his chest, thumb just settling at the hollow of Cord's throat; with the other he gripped Cord's shoulder, and then the nape of his neck. No doubt he intended only to—to tip their foreheads together, perhaps, to tell Cord again that he was not dead.

But he _was_ , Cord thought, with something that was almost anger. He was, he was, and Cord reached up and caught the blind man's chin in his hand and kissed him.

The blind man's mouth was soft against his—startled, Cord thought, and that was a mark against this vision or spirit or whatever it was, for when had Cord ever been able to take the blind man by surprise? And another mark, now: for the blind man didn't move away from the kiss, or—or sit there, untouched by it, allowing what would happen to happen as it would and waiting to see what might come of it.

He drew a quick little breath against Cord's lips, and then he turned his face into Cord's touch, and kissed back.

Such indulgence, unearned, stolen; Cord half resented himself for it, for daring even to imagine this, but he could not stop himself. It _felt_ real, but—

But it couldn't be. It _couldn't_ be.

The blind man's fingertips were gentle against the side of his throat, the angle of his jaw. And then the blind man stroked across his cheek, the wetness there, and went still against his mouth, and then eased away far enough to say, "Cord," again, very quietly.

A cruel dream, Cord thought dimly, that even in his own mind he could ruin this with pointless weeping.

"See," he said aloud, before the blind man could speak again. "See, you are not yourself, you never were. You are dead, and I have dreamed you here."

"Oh?" the blind man murmured. "And you've dreamed of this often, have you, since I died?"

Cord squeezed his wet eyes shut and shook his head. "The blind man would not—he's above such things," he tried to explain, though of course it was pointless to press the argument against this shade. "He desires nothing—"

"Is that so? How remarkable," the blind man said, running his thumb gently, absently, along the line of Cord's mouth. "Well, in that case, perhaps you're better off rid of this blind man of yours. If he would have turned down a gift such as this—how wise could he possibly have been?"

Cord trembled where he knelt; he could not look up. He hadn't the strength. It felt, looked, sounded like the blind man—he had _woken_ , he would have sworn it, and still, still, the blind man remained—but—

"Cord," the blind man said, and brushed that light soothing touch along the lines of Cord's face, his brow, and then slid those long strong fingers into Cord's hair. "The pilgrims who seek Pir-a-Piru dress in white, the simplest things they have, to demonstrate their humility. Whoever you found at the foot of the mountain cliff, it was not I."

"But you fell," Cord whispered.

"I did," the blind man agreed. "I struck a tree that grew from a crack in the cliff face. As luck should have it, my flute broke instead of my back."

Cord swallowed, and pressed the back of his hand to his eyes. "But how did you—"

"There is a princess of the mountain hawks who once owed me a favor," the blind said, mild. "She no longer does."

Cord didn't know the sound that came from him for a laugh until it reached his ears; he let his head tip forward, and the blind man caught him and pressed a firm steady kiss to his forehead.

"Cord. It was not I."

And Cord drew in a long shuddering breath, and began, very carefully, to believe it.

"I went to the city thinking perhaps I might find another flute," the blind man added, after a moment. "And if I played it—" He stopped, and huffed a little, as though he too wished to laugh. "If I played it, I thought, then if you were still alive, you would hear."

"I would have," Cord told him. "I would have. You will never be without one again, I will carve you a dozen," and the blind man did laugh then, and tipped Cord's face up, and kissed him again.

 

 


End file.
